


Everything

by divenire



Series: Prompt Project [45]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Derek actually makes an effort, M/M, but he's still Derek, serious conversations are serious, so you know how that goes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-18
Updated: 2012-11-18
Packaged: 2017-11-19 00:21:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/566953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/divenire/pseuds/divenire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He has to do this and he has to do it now.</p><p>He’s going to tell Stiles everything. Everything. Kate, everything. </p><p>He has to. He has to because he’s never told anyone other than Laura and that was mostly because she’d forced it out of him. </p><p>He has to, and he has to before he loses his nerve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything

Derek runs his hand up the back of his neck and curls his fingers into his hair. 

He has to do this and he has to do it now.

He’s going to tell Stiles everything. Everything. Kate, everything. 

He has to. He has to because he’s never told anyone other than Laura and that was mostly because she’d forced it out of him. 

He has to, and he has to before he loses his nerve. 

He’s never been any good at much of anything in his life, let alone telling people things. 

No, wait. He has been good at one thing. Making rash, brutal decisions and acting on them quickly. It’s never really worked out for him, almost never, but he does it anyway because it’s the only way he knows how to get anything done.

And Stiles? He’s important. And Derek can’t do this anymore. He can’t go around with this weight on his shoulders, feeling like he’s tricking Stiles into liking him by pretending he’s this solid wall, this big, sturdy kind of person who can handle anything when the truth is that he spends hours every day just trying to figure out what the hell he’s doing and going over how it all went wrong for the millionth time. 

And more importantly he needs to know, before he gets any deeper into this, that Stiles is going to stick around. He’s pretty sure that they’re… No, actually, he’s not sure of anything and that’s the problem. They’ve been dating for about six months now, and Derek hopes that that is long enough into a relationship to go explaining everything. But that’s probably not true. There’s probably no good time in a relationship to sit the person you’re dating down and say, “Hey, so you know how my life was a colossal disaster before I met you? Well, there’s more to it than you think.” It’s about the worst thing you can do to someone, to drop this sort of bombshell on someone. But he has to. It’s unfair of him not to. And much as he is a complete screw-up in pretty well all areas of of his life, he at least tries to be fair.

And he doesn’t… he doesn’t… he wants Stiles to be happy. So he wants to give Stiles an out. Because he’s not entirely convinced he can provide the sort of happiness Stiles deserves. And Stiles should be prepared, he should know…

Derek doesn’t know. Everything. He’s going to tell him everything.

 

So, he waits in Stiles’ dorm room until he comes back from class. He doesn’t know Stiles’ schedule, so he ends up waiting for hours. Hours with plenty of time to think. Plenty of time to think and plenty of time to curse himself out for ever even starting this in the first place because really, it was horrible of him. It was awful. But he can’t (and he doesn’t want to) get out of it now. He’d had a weird sort of a whatever you want to call it (he refuses to use the word crush) on Stiles for a while but now? Now he doesn’t want to think about his life without Stiles in it. And not just as a friend or a packmate, either. That’s probably a bit much for someone you’ve been dating for six months, but he’s not going to go letting that part out, just the ‘hey, I’m a big disaster, so run while you can’ part. 

It’s about another ten minutes before someone walks into the room and it’s not Stiles but Stiles’ roommate. He’s about to say hello when the guy - Derek thinks his name is Gary, or Garrett, or something - jumps and yelps just a little. Garrett is a skinny, short, clearly easily frightened kind of guy. 

“There - there aren’t supposed to be any non-students in the dorm rooms unsupervised!” Gary squeaks. 

Derek doesn’t say anything in response to this, just casually raises an eyebrow at Gary (Grant? Now it’s starting to bother him, but still not enough to ask.)

Grant opens his mouth to complain some more so Derek adds a subtle head tilt to the act, and Grant huffs. “Stiles isn’t even going to be here until eight.” 

Derek looks down at his watch - it’s 4:46 now. Grant huffs again, and this time Derek thinks its’ more of a proud sort of huff, which is funny, coming from a so pale he must be daylight deprived, coke bottle glasses wearing super dork like Grant. 

When he doesn’t move from his spot on Stiles’ bed, Grant’s face bunches up and he grunts, “Well, fine then! Stay here all night. I’ve got class until nine, anyway.”

With that, Grant struts the few feet to the door and slams it shut on his way out. 

For a few minutes after Grant leaves, Derek toys with the idea of leaving and coming back later. But he doesn’t. He stays right where he is because he knows that if he leaves, he won’t come back. Or rather, he’ll come back, just not for this. 

So he sits there and he waits until Stiles comes back at 8:15. 

Stiles rushes into the room, apparently in a hurry for something (he’s always in a hurry for something) and the second he notices Derek is in the room he stops dead. “Derek?” 

“Hey,” Derek says. And that’s it. No explanation for why he’s here or anything, not yet. 

“You miss me already, huh?” Stiles says with a sly grin that’s intended to be sexy, and really only is because Stiles is trying so hard and for whatever reason Derek finds that more attractive than it should be. 

Stiles starts crawling up onto the bed and he’s about an inch away from kissing him when Derek stops him short with a hand raised between them and a, “We need to talk.”

“Oh,” Stiles says as he backs up and the way his face breaks, Derek wants to kick himself. Clearly, he’s off to a good start here. 

“No! No, I don’t mean…” Derek starts but then trails off. He pushes his hand down onto the bed, like it can hold him up, hold in all the things he’s trying to keep contained. “No, I just… there are things I need to tell you.”

Stiles smiles again but this time it’s one of those ones he uses to cover up how nervous he is. “Like what? I already know you’re a big, scary werewolf, that your uncle is only just on the better side of homicidal mania, and that you live in a burned out shack. What else could there be? Wait, you didn’t bite someone new, did you? Isaac, Erica and Boyd are enough to deal with.” 

“No, I didn’t - “ Derek starts but then he stops. What? “Why is that what you immediately jumped to?” 

Stiles shrugs and presses himself up against the wall. “I dunno.”

“Okay, well…” Derek lets out a sigh. This is going badly. And it’s only going to get worse. “It’s something else, okay?”

“And what, you’re going to make me guess?” Stiles says with an eyebrow raised as high as it can go before running out of room on his face. 

“No. But if you’d shut up for five seconds, I’d tell you.”

“If you don’t want me to say anything, stop pausing like that. You know I don’t do well with suspense.” 

“Sorry not all of us talk as fast as you do. Sometimes normal people need a second or two to organize their thoughts.”

“And this is my fault because?” 

“It’s not. Just… just shut up for a second, alright?” 

“Okay. Okay. Wait, are you okay?” 

“Yes, I’m fine. No, I’m not. Just… I have to say this, okay?” 

“Alright, warning you now. You’re officially scaring me. And not in the sexy sort of way.” 

Derek rolls his eyes at that because how did he end up with someone who says things like that anyway? 

“I’m trying to tell you something here, okay?” 

Stiles reaches out and puts a hand on his arm. “Okay.”

Derek purses his lips and looks down because even now that Stiles is finally listening, he doesn’t know how to say it. He doesn’t want to say it. He really doesn’t want to say it. He starts toying with the idea of just never telling him, never telling anyone. But he can’t. Not when Stiles is sitting there all concerned, with soft eyes and his hand resting on his arm and… Fuck. Here we go.

“So… you know…” he pauses, swallows loudly. “About how Kate Argent…” fuck, this is probably the hardest thing he’s ever done. “She burned my house down.” 

Stiles looks like he desperately wants to say something, but mercifully he remains silent. 

“There’s more to it than that.” 

Derek can almost hear the words, “More to it than what?” popping out of Stiles’ mouth, but Stiles still doesn’t speak. This has to be a record for the longest period of time Stiles has ever stayed quiet. 

“She… I… You… okay…” Derek blows out a breath and smacks his head back against the wall loudly.

Stiles hand slides down his arm to grip his hand tightly. “She what, Derek?” he asks. 

“She… I was 15. And she… she was beautiful and I, I didn’t look like this. I was quiet and awkward. I was a skinny kid with big ears, big hands and big feet and she… she was the first girl, woman, to ever pay any attention to me.”

Stiles smiles and it’s half fond, half teasing. “You’re still quiet and awkward, people just mistake it for mysterious and broody due to all the leather and the stubble.”

Derek almost smiles at that, almost, and he loves how Stiles can put him at ease with just a few words. And he wishes he could leave it at that, but he can’t. He has to keep going. “We kept it a secret. We went out to places where no one would see us and we hung out in the back of her car. I was with her for over a year. I thought… I thought she liked me. I thought she cared about me. I thought I loved her. I was going to tell her everything because I thought it was going to last forever. But then it turned out she was just using me for infomation. And.. well, you know what happened after that.”

“Ohh.” There’s a long pause as exactly what that all means connects together in Stiles’ mind. “Oh my god. I don’t… I mean… how do you? How are you? I can’t even begin to… really.” Stiles squeezes his eyes shut and squeezes Derek’s hand.

Derek is about to say something, because this is what he expected. He’s about to say that it’s okay, that… 

“I’m sorry,” Stiles says. And this Derek didn’t expect. He didn’t expect rage, pure and hot to be flowing out of Stiles so fiercely that it’s almost tangible. Stiles doesn’t say anything about it, he doesn’t bring it up, how angry this makes him. Instead, he just says, “I’m sorry,” again. 

And Derek wants to say something now, but he has no idea what he wants to say, what he should say, so he doesn’t say anything. He just sits there, holding onto Stiles’ hand tightly.

“Wait, so…” Stiles says, and immediately, Derek feels nervous. So, what? “Why did you tell me all of that? Why now?”

Derek gulps. Of course that would be the question Stiles asks. “I -” he starts. “I-” he starts then stops again. He knows why. Why is it so hard to say out loud? “I wanted you to know. I’ve never really told anyone, but you’re not just anyone. You’re -” again, he stops even though his brain is quickly filling in the words. Everything. The person I want to spend my life with. The most important person I’ve ever known. And you should know, I needed you to know.

Stiles smiles and says, “You wanted to see if you could scare me away, huh?” 

Derek doesn’t say anything, but he nods, just barely. 

“You don’t actually want to scare me away though, do you?” Stiles looks at the ground as he says it and Derek can’t help but feel like a jerk when Stiles’ voice cracks at the end.

Derek shakes his head. “No.” Of course not. Never. Not ever. Not you.

“Well, good.” Stiles looks up just as Derek looks away. “But we’re going to have to talk about it some more, you know,” Stiles says. 

Derek nods again. Yes, I know. He forces himself to say, “Eventually, yeah.”

“Good.” Stiles pauses for a moment and Derek wonders why. Then Stiles says, “You know I love you, right?” 

And somehow, even though he’s suspected it and he’s hoped it was true, he’s a little bit taken aback by this. “Don’t act so shocked, okay?” Stiles says. 

“I love you too,” Derek says. 

“Well, of course you do.”


End file.
